I absolutely loved The Summer of Impossible things by Rowan Coleman, it was a fabulous book. The chance to go back in time to change something that has gone wrong, is something I think a lot of people would like to do. The story had me hooked from the beginning. The characters were interesting and likeable. I did not want to put the book down. This is a book I will read again and again. I would like to thank NetGalley for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

A fantastic and engrossing read with rich writing. Suspenseful, intriguing and just generally a wonderful story.

The blurb:

If you could change the past, would you?

Thirty years ago, something terrible happened to Luna’s mother. Something she’s only prepared to reveal after her death.

Now Luna and her sister have a chance to go back to their mother’s birthplace and settle her affairs. But in Brooklyn they find more questions than answers, until something impossible – magical – happens to Luna, and she meets her mother as a young woman back in the summer of 1977.

At first Luna’s thinks she’s going crazy, but if she can truly travel back in time, she can change things. But in doing anything – everything – to save her mother’s life, will she have to sacrifice her own?

I really don't know what to say about this book except that I loved it! 5*

great read and easy to follow story line. look forward to reading more from this author.

Rowan Coleman writes beautiful books and I think The Summer of Impossible Things might just be my favourite. I felt very different to her other books due to the time travel element but the author's talent at drawing out deep emotions from her characters shines through.
Luna has lost her mother to suicide, devastated, she and her sister travel to New York to settle their mother's estate. Whilst there, Luna finds herself travelling in time to 1977, to a time when her mother was blissfully happy. Once Luna comes to terms with the idea that she can time travel and that she is not going mad; she realises that she may be able to alter the past. What if she can prevent the event which triggered her mother's depression which led to her suicide? But what if stopping that event means that Luna won't exist? Is she prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice?
It's tricky to review this book without spoiling the plot so I shall try and be very careful. If you can go along with the idea of time travel then you will love this book. I really enjoyed the parts of the book set in 1977 and how Luna has to fir into a different time and being with a very different version of her mother.
Rowan Coleman uses Luna's ability to time travel to explore the idea of love and sacrifice. Luna loves her family, it is clear to see through her relationship with her sister. She loved her mother and would do anything to change how her mother had felt. She is given the chance to alter the events of her mother's life and she has to decide if she is prepared to lose her own life in order to do so.
The Summer of Impossible Things is brave, thought-provoking and beautifully written; Rowan Coleman shines yet again.

This was a magical story which I am still thinking about.

Following the suicide of their mother, sistes Luna and her sister Pea return to the house their mother grew up in.

Luna has alwasy felt different like she doesnt quite belong and when one day she 'meets' her mother her first thought is that she is seriously ill.

However Luna quickly realises that what she is experiences is real and that through her actions she can not only visit the past she can possibly change the future.

This is a brilliant concept told from Lunas point of view but in two different timelines - now and back in 1977 when she comes face to face with not only the truth about her mother but also the truth about who she really is.

Coleman takes the reader on journey of discovery which examines what makes us who we are and how our past defines us.

The only thing which made me knock a star off is that Luna can be so frustratingly selfish - there are so many decisions she makes for her own benefit which just dont take into account anything but her own blinkered desires.... all wrapped up in doing it for her mother. Plus I just dont buy it that someone so selfish would be so unselfish in what she ends up doing!

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

This book was on virtually every 'must-read' list for 2017, so I went hunting for it on Netgalley, who thankfully provided me a copy.

We follow Luna and her sister Pia, newly grieving for their Mum. They've headed from England to their Mum's hometown in Bay Ridge to settle her finances and sell her old home. Having recently uncovered a mind-numbing secret about Luna's origins, the girls are trying to fathom how to deal with all this information.

And then something truly bizarre happens to Luna. In normal cases this would be a spoiler, but given that it is actually mentioned in the blurb itself, I won't classify it as such. Luna travels back in time, precisely thirty years in the past, and meets her mother.

At first, Luna is convinced that something is wrong with her. That her vivid hallucinations portend some grave illness she must be suffering, but with each trip, she brings back conclusive evidence, no matter how small, that she actually did travel through time.

She takes it upon herself to use this magical opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and give her mother the life she truly deserved, even at the cost of her own.

The central conceit is an attractive one - who doesn't love time travel. But a lot of the book felt a little derivative of stories past. There's a hint of the darkness we found in Octavia E Butler's Kindred, as well as some of the fairytale outlook of Back to the Future. Set primarily in Bay Ridge, we don't quite get the feel of that area, especially in the 70s, when it has become a hub of tourism due to the filming of Saturday Night Fever.

The copy I received from Netgalley was rife with typos, which made it an annoying read from time to time. It's an easy to read book, the language so simple it doesn't tax the brain in the least. The writer doesn't give her readers much credit - spelling everything out for them a little too slowly. She even falls into the trap of trying to explain the time travel phenomenon - bad idea, never justify yourself, just go with the flow. We have already cottoned on to what is happening to Luna, what her actions will mean for her, etc, long before the writer bothers to let Luna address it.

There's a plethora of cliches included as well. It's the in thing now to have a scientist as the lead female protagonist, hence Luna is a physicist. Her sister is messed up, but gregarious. She is aloof and awkward. Everyone is super hot looking and thin-privileged. There's no variety in the kind of people they meet. It grates on you. Also, aside from Luna, not a single other woman in the book is interested in science. No, she's the only one. Even in the 70s - you mean to tell me, none of those girls she meets ever caught an episode of Star Trek and fell in love with the show? Bizarre!

There's a plot twist near the end of the book, at a point when we're thinking we've wrapped it up. It's a good twist, but comes out of the blue. We have a perpetrator pinpointed from the very beginning, no one negates it. But, suddenly, the bad guy changes and... well we didn't see it coming. I would have understood if others had hemmed and hawed over the name of the villain, but they didn't. It felt like somewhere down the line the editing got jumbled.

There are conveniences thrown into this book that... are just too convenient. The mother in this book leaves behind a whole bunch of filmed tapes recalling the life-changing past incidents and the information they need - how many people would do that? Spoilers ahead:

I think most readers would have guessed that Luna was the product of her mother's assault. It weighs heavily on the girls, and took over the mother's life. She was sad and depressed all her life, eventually leading to her own suicide. The trouble is, partway through, out of the blue, the girls' aunt reveals that the perpetrator did not die the night of the assault. No, the aunt just made the mother think that she had killed that man so she could get away in peace. She left the country that night to be with her future husband in England.

So Luna then lays into the aunt, pretending like it wasn't the rape that destroyed her mother's wellbeing, but the act of killing the perpetrator. Suddenly the bad guy shifts from rapist to protective older sister. There's nary a mention of the horrid, cruel life that said aunt then had to endure for the rest of her existence at the hands of the mobster whose help she took to clean up the mess. I found all of that too cruel and too convenient. Women turning on each other instead of taking down the real bads - it's unfair.

Then, when Luna think she's saved her mother, she alters her life a little too much. Her mother is alive because she didn't kill her assailant, and Luna is happy. But it doesn't bother her at all that the man going scot-free for so many years would have affected other women. She (and by extension the reader) is hit over the head with a young woman's account of what happened to her at a very young age at the hands of this man, and only then does Luna decided to act. Why didn't she think her mum needed saving from the entire incident? Or that other people would need saving too? End spoilers.

The writing detracted greatly from the story - I found it lacking throughout, especially in the initial stages when the girls are working through their grief. Te dialogue was mechanical - even if they weren't able to process what had happened, no one would speak like that.

The uber-fairytale ending was a little too happy and convenient - except for one bit which I don't know if it's supposed to be dreamy or ick. It drew too many parallels to Back to the Future. But then we probably need a few feel-good books and movies in our lives.

I can see why this book comes so highly recommended. It's good, but the writing could have been better. And the typos... They need to fix the typos.

Rowan Coleman

Time travel, grief, mystery, love, sadness, hope and happiness, this is what I got from this story. I have read a couple of time travel stories and watched a few films but this book was so interesting. Luna is grieving for her mother and has recently discovered that her father is not her birth father and is experiencing 'funny turns', she worries it could be something life threatening. Luna and her sister have travelled to Boston USA to sort out their mothers estate, and they discover more than they expected. Can you change history by travelling back in time? Will there be consequences These are just two of Luna's dilemmas and there are much more discoveries to be made. I really loved this book and I am grateful to Netgalley and Penguin Random House, Ebury publishing for giving me the chance to read and review. Put this on your 'to be read' list, you won't be disappointed.

I had such an emotional response to this book and one that I haven't had for a long time. This is a beautifully written evocative story about Luna and her sister Pea and their attempts to cope with things they learn about their mother after her death. Luna has a special gift which helps her explore her mother's secrets more deeply whilst they visit Brooklyn, their mother's birthplace. In some ways, the story and characters are really simple but there is something about the way Coleman writes which make it so much more. This has catapulted into my list of all time favorites and I can't wait to read this again and again.

This is incredibly good – Rowan Coleman’s writing has stepped up a notch with this book, and I especially loved the mind-bending concepts of time travel and alternate universes.
When Luna’s mother dies of an overdose after a lifetime of depression, Luna and her sister Pia travel to Brooklyn, to the house their mother grew up in. Here Luna starts to see things, impossible things, just as she did when she was a child.
Luna has no idea how her mother changed from a beautiful and charismatic young woman with so much sparkle, to the sad person she herself knew. Now she learns her mother’s story in a way that should not be possible and she will do anything to change the past. Unfortunately meddling with time will have consequences for everyone.
This is a fascinating idea and brilliantly executed. This book tingles with possibilities and surprises and is unlike anything this author has written before. Her books are always so human and full of emotion and this book is all that and so much more with a paranormal element, mystery and themes of life and death, fate and hope. It really makes you think about the lengths you would go to for someone you love. I am still thinking about the ending, I loved it. Rowan Coleman fans will love this, and possibly those who fell in love with the time traveller’s wife. Lucky you if you’ve not read it yet!

I can't express how much I enjoyed this book.
A clever idea, involving the science of time travel and with beautifully drawn characters and places. I was in Brooklyn in the heat of a 1970s summer. With people I knew well, who behaved as they should. Highly recommended.

This book is a bundle of memorable characters and cliches - I've just finished it this second and it's left me with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. I'm really close to my own mother, so when books focus on mother-daughter relationships and the bond between them, I can't help but relate to and love them. At some points this book felt rushed (and the insta-love thing...dear god not again) but I forgive it for leaving me feeling this way. Wonderfully written and a great read.

"We all have our time machines, don't we? Those that take us back are memories... And those that carry us forward are dreams." HG Wells

I am going to find it so hard to choose my Top Reads for 2017. I already had eight books listed as possibles and this wonderful book makes nine. And we're not even a third of the way through the year yet! I didn't actually know what this book was about before I started it, I just knew that I love Rowan Coleman's books so when I was offered the opportunity to read this, I wasn't going to turn it down!

As that wonderful quotation from HG Wells suggests, which is used in the book and I've used at the top, this book involves an strong element of time travel. Now, it doesn't matter whether you believe time-travelling is a complete impossibility or whether you are more open-minded on the matter, you will absolutely believe in what happens to Luna throughout the course of the book.

Luna has travelled to New York with her sister Pia following their mother's death. They have gone there to settle legal matters and find out a bit more about their mother who left in 1977 and never returned. Over the course of the few days they are there, impossibly, Luna finds herself transported back to 1977 and meets her mother and her friends. At first she thinks she must be ill, but slowly realises that this actually happening. On returning to present day New Year, she realises that she has changed her future. And impossible though it seems, she begins to think she can change the course of her mother's life. Will this mean losing the person she knows herself to be?

This is such a beautifully written book which I was caught up in for the Easter weekend. Rowan Coleman has a real talent for writing about characters who you will take to your heart and you will live through all the experiences and emotions with them. Luna has had her world rocked by revelations she finds out about herself after her mother's death and is struggling to deal with these at the same time as she is grieving. When she begins to realise that she can influence and change her mother's life you can't help feel for her and the impossible choice she thinks she has to make.

Love is such a strong feature in this book. Luna loves her mother so much, and perhaps only realises just how much when she is no longer around. She loves her as the young woman she meets in the 1970s and grieves for the loss of her vitality. The book asks the question about whether love lasts through time and I think it is answered by one of the characters who says :"our physical bodies, they break down, eventually returning to dust, but energy, energy is never destroyed. And what is love is it isn't the most powerful energy we know of?

I was totally captivated by this book and it made me think once again about how all our actions have consequences, even though we may not know it at the time. The smallest interactions that Luna has in the past have profound effects on her future, but her vitality, her energy, her love remains. Sometimes, just sometimes, what seems impossible can really happen. The Summer of Impossible Things is a wonderfully magical book and I loved it.

This is an outstanding read. A beautiful, beautiful book. Not, I hasten to add, strictly speaking a crime book – though it does have a crime at the heart of it. Rather it is a magical piece of prose which transports the reader from present day Brooklyn into the past and back again with a lyrical touch that is so light you feel as if you are dancing on air.
Luna and Pia are sisters. After their mother’s death, they travel to Brooklyn to dispose of a derelict property that their mother and her sister jointly owned, but which their mother would never agree to sell while she was alive.
While they are there, they learn things about their mother that they never knew, but which explain a great deal about her and the family life they led.
Then Luna begins to learn more at close hand and finds she is faced with an impossible choice. Can she do what she must to save her mother – and if she does, what will become of her?
There are some books that require you to suspend disbelief and you struggle to do so. This is not one of them. Like Tinkerbell, whom Peter Pan saved by getting the audience to believe in fairies, I wanted to believe in this so much that it came easily.
A story of love and sacrifice, of doing all you can for those you love, The Summer of Impossible Things left an indelible mark on my heart.
Buy it, read it. Weep.

I start by saying that whilst I love time travel books, I've only consciously read three -- The Time Travellers Wife (5*), 11.22.63 (5*) and The Bone Clocks (4*). So it was a tough act to follow.
I hadn't consciously chosen to read this as a time travel book but as I love Rowan Coleman's writing.

It took me time to warm up to Luna and Pea. Once the book moved to New York and the action began, then it started to fall into place. I could imagine the scenes so well and absolutely loved the cast of characters -- even the ones we are not supposed to like! Great evocation of the times too...

I'm not going to say much more but this is a beautiful book that is well worth a read. How far would you go to change history?? 4.5* from me.

This is another beautifully written, emotional, thought provoking story from Rowan Coleman. It's about Luna, with her sister Pia goes to Brooklyn to sell the family home after her mother's suicide. She couldn't get over the tragedy of herself being raped over thirty years ago.

Luna whilst in Brooklyn, knows that there is something wrong with herself and because of this she can goes back and forth in time. So she sets out to save her mother from the accident so, she can have her mother back.
Whilst doing this things in the present begin to change.

This story teaches us how far will one go to put others they love dearly first, whatever the cost. What would you do to save someone you love from heartache? I loved it.

I had read a lot of good things about Rowan Coleman's books but for some reason, this is the first one I have read. All the people who said she was an amazing writer were right :)

It is a difficult book to quantify - it starts off as the story of Luna and Pia who are going to New York to see where their newly deceased mother grew up. A mother who had spent a lifetime being haunted by what had happened there, and who ended up committing suicide.

Then Luna discovers she can travel back to 1977, which is shocking, surprising and confronting. The people that she meets, both in the past and in the future, are fascinating, and each of them are part of the story about her mother and by extension, her.

I couldn't put this book down, it was so intricate, so clever and it made me laugh and cry as well. For that reason, I have given it five stars.

Highly recommended.

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book. Thank you to THE Book Club, NetGalley and Ebury Press.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1959138876?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

A truly magical read from the wonderful Rowan Coleman.

Gosh, where to start with The Summer of Impossible Things? An amazing setting - 1970s Brooklyn. Wonderful characters - in the shape of slightly socially awkward Luna and her loving, recovering addict sister, Pea. Not forgetting their wise Brooklyn landlady, Mrs Finkle. I already know this will be one of my favourite books of the year. It's the kind of novel I'm keen to press on/discuss with friends, that I'll remember long after I've finished reading. It's about love and hurt and time travel and the lengths a family is prepared to go to to ensure the best for each other. Rowan Coleman's characters and writing are so superb that she makes it easy to believe in time travel. Something fantastical happens when reading The Summer of Impossible Things - time vanishes - whilst enjoying 'just one more chapter.' A brilliant read.